On Monday’s show, Ed Schultz chose to concentrate on the unduly high level of open abuse various operatives of the Republican Party are heaping on the President now. His guests were Melissa Harris-Perry and James Peterson:-

Several points to be queried here:-

1. Why does every Chairman of the RNC inevitably look like a sex criminal? Mind you, Reince Priebus not only looks like one, his name sounds like a sexual disease.

2.I agree with Melissa Harris-Perry. Priebus shouldn’t apologise for likening the President to the perpertrator of a criminal act – in this case Captain Schettino, not only a criminal, but the ultimate coward, who abandoned his ship and its passengers in favour of his own safety. Such an analogy only serves to make the Republicans look like angry, sour-faced, cold-hearted bastards, with more than a smidgeon of racism thrown in.

3. I agree with James Peterson. Who the hell is Allen West? I’ll tell you: a coward. West is the prissy, little kid who stood behind the fence shouting insults at various people passing, but when confronted by someone challenging him, he would either walk back what he said or run. Peterson thinks West should be called out, invited to debate his points and be challenged. He won’t respond. What I would say to West is basically this: if you have a point to make, make it; and remember … you were supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, and now you’re an honourable gentleman, duly elected to serve your constituents, Republican and Democrat. Imagine how comfortable your Democratic constituents would feel having to contact you with a local problem? And as for the “gentleman” part of your job description, past and present, if your commanding officer never told you, if your daddy never told you, then your mamma sure as hell should have told you that you don’t slander a lady the way you’ve slandered Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And finally, if you reckon you’re the man to lead African-American Democrats off the DemocraTIC plantation, then stop trying to sound like a sassy slave talking to the white folk. Memo to Congressman West: Sarah Palin is not Miss Scarlett, and you are not Big Sam.

Later in Ed’s show, he hosted that old Professional Left nemesis Joan “I-Resent-Black-People” Walsh, who – just seven months ago – was reckoning that all vociferous supporters of the President were Republican trolls paid by Andrew Breitbart.

Now at virtually the eleventh hour, Joan – like a lot of others of her ilk – seem to be walking back a lot of their own Obama hatred, which got to be more than just a bit vitriolic, especially during the last two years. Of course, Joan had to blog about the treatment of the GOP’s treatment of the President (whom Joan now refers to as “a decent guy”).

I don’t agree with every move the president has made. But I think the more Republicans try to demonize him, the more most American voters will see the difference between the GOP caricature and the man they’ve come to know. I get more pro-Obama with each vicious anti-Obama attack. I’m sure the rest of his base does, too … Has there ever been a more decent, upstanding, all-American president, with his dog and his family and his Apollo Theatre song solos, treated more shamefully by his opponents? I’d be more horrified by the abuse if I wasn’t sure it was backfiring.

It’s 2012, an election year, and there’s a President who’s running for re-election who’s been vilified mercilessly by his own side as much as by the opposition; and whereas the opposition has been led cock-a-snoot by Fox News, our underminers have the Professional Left, who’ve suddenly awoken, smelled their designer coffee and realised that a lot of the pushback from people they’ve blocked from their blogs, twitterfeeds and Facebook pages is resonating -hence the new dance known as the Professional Left Moon Walk.

Lest you think we’ve forgotten, Joan and Ed (and, yes, Ed, you’ve done your fair share of undermining mischief too), we haven’t your words of wanton criticism, your dog whistles and your whining.

Here’s a tune by which to practice your Moon Walk dance. Enjoy:-

Cross-posted from Emilia Wahoo ]]> http://www.osborneink.com/2012/02/sex-lies-videotape-and-obama-derangement-syndrome.html/feed 0 http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/scary-stupid-headupassitis.html http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/scary-stupid-headupassitis.html#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:00:42 +0000 Emilia1956 http://www.osborneink.com/?p=18430 Continue reading →]]>

By Emilia1956

For the umpteenth time, Hillary Clinton has said she’s leaving politics. She’s not interested in running for President. She’s finished. Done. Retired. For the time being. At least after this stint as Secretary of State.

According to an article in today’s Guardian, she’s bowing out of public life after the November elections.

She told state department employees on Thursday she was ready for a rest and is paying no attention to the Republican presidential candidate debates. She said she wanted to find out how tired she was after being first lady, senator, aspiring presidential candidate and finally the US secretary of state.

“I have made it clear that I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur [if Obama wins re-election,” she told a meeting. “But I think after 20 years, and it will be 20 years, of being on the high wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am.”

But, she appeared to leave the door open to a possible eventual return, adding to laughter from the crowd that “everyone always says that when they leave these jobs”.

I don’t know how many times this woman has to clarify her point. Besides, most Secretaries of State serve only one Presidential term anyway. Warren Christopher made way for Madeleine Albright. Colin Powell stepped aside for Condi Rice. And Hillary will defer to someone else – possibly John Kerry or Bill Richardson or even James Webb.

The Clintonistas hate that, but, as the article states, she’s not ruling out a return, and as much as Bill Keller and the rest of the herd might wish for a Vice-Presidential position on the 2012 ticket, she’s still seen by people like Ed Rendell as a viable Presidential candidate for 2016. Who knows?

As Hillary says, she’s got to retire to realise how tired she is, and at times during the past three years, she’s looked exhausted.

I wish Hillary well in whatever she does. I would have voted for her in 2008, had she won the nomination, and I’d vote for her in 2016, if she secures it then.

What’s scary about this announcement are the reactions by some of The Guardian‘s American commentators and their total and dangerous naivete.

Like jimbojamesiv:

Hillary’s departure would be a reason to vote for Barack, and, yet, Obama still blows, so I can’t.

Don’t vote, occupy and opt-out.

Stand by the principle that the system is broken beyond repair.

Do not legitimize the corruption by participating. It’s what each one of the decent persons must die, granted there aren’t a lot of them, but there are enough to topple all the corrupt regimes, which includes basically every so-called nation-state.

Or overhead. who’s clearly in over his own:-

Vote third party. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Then MonkEMan, apparently a sane voice in the wilderness of stupidity:-

Protesting by making yourself silent and powerless is stupid beyond belief. Protest and occupy – yes. But get out and vote as well.

Only to be answered by the perennially obtuse OldSlov:-

If nobody voted, then the current process would lose its legitimacy. That is sorely needed, because we effectively have a democratic dictatorship. We seem to be under the illusion that we have a choice when everything was decided a long time ago.

There seems to be a couple of stupidity epidemics raging at the moment. I can’t decide whether this singular resistance against voting is the legacy of the Occupy movement, which – whilst emphasizing income inequality – does nothing to alleviate this by encouraging people not to vote. Not voting, or voting third party, would give all the ammunition necessary to the party who’s insistent that income disparity should be even greater, that women and minorities give up any equal rights achieved and that education, environment and health suffer all the worse for it.

That’s not just stupidity; that’s cussed headupassitis – and that’s scary.

Cross-posted from Emilia Wahoo

The White House has also been far too free with cuts to energy assistance programs for low-income households. Because I have an intimate understanding of American poverty, I’ve actively opposed this trend for two years in a row. These cuts erode economic recovery by reducing an important stabilizer for the working poor at wintertime. That shouldn’t happen.

The president also came into office promising to do something about the college bowl system; Josh Levin even called him obsessed with the subject. Yet President Obama has made zero progress on the issue, even with our season of intense public attention to the dark downside of college football programs.

Now look through those three ‘graffs and tell me which part is the obotomapology.

I have never seen my “job” at this blog to be about apologizing for, or rationalizing away, presidential decisions. There are lots of policy areas where I don’t agree with Obama, and I’m not enamored of every decision he’s made even in policy areas where I generally agree. That’s more or less how I expected things to stand when I supported him all the way back in 2007.

For no matter how receptive and helpful a president is, any broad agenda (and what could be broader than the progressive agenda?) will find itself stymied at some points by even the friendliest of presidents. No president can be 100% of what any American or group of Americans want; that is not how politics in America have ever worked.

Moreover, it isn’t just one individual politician: both presidency and parties have barriers to complete participation in an agenda. Remember, Bush did not fully satisfy abortion opponents with his stem cell policy, either. All the teapublicanism, you’ll recall, was about putting “real conservatives” in office.

One example of a progressive policy area that suffers under the Obama administration is marijuana legalization efforts, medicinal and otherwise. The way through the War on Drugs (as opposed to simply ending that war) is to divide and conquer rather than continue pretending marijuana and heroin are the same.

Democrats generally don’t push these issues, however, as no one in the party can speak about them coherently. (That’s a problem with Democrats on many issues — there is no common set of talking points.) Issues like marijuana legislation are perceived as coming from the “dirty hippy” wing, of course, and that makes it hard for Democratic officeholders to participate. But that may change.

Marijuana has a large, highly-engaged following that enjoys crossover political support from libertarians and some conservatives. Marijuana is an example of a highly-engaged demographic, then, but not a broad constituency. That is, few voters care enough to turn out for the issue, but those who do care will turn out in droves, even for Ron Paul. They can’t get him nominated, however, because the issue isn’t a winner in the broader electorate.

Obama has nixed any hope of sane marijuana policy on his watch, and it’s not hard to understand why. What president wants to be “soft on crime”? You can see that in Obama’s pardon policy: the White House has issued very few pardons, and only to a rigorously-selected tranche of applicants. (Note the anger at Haley Barbour in Mississippi over the issue.)

Obama did sign the Fair Sentencing Act with bipartisan support, however, and that is what drives the hyperengaged to distraction: where there is no consensus, there is no forward progress. That’s not just a problem for this particular president, either.

With no consensus for single-payer, you get an inefficient form of single-payer by enforced market participation and Medicaid enlargement. With no consensus for the American Jobs Act, it doesn’t matter that the White House writes the legislation the way it didn’t with health care, or that the president’s advisers talk it up on TV, or that the president uses his bully pulpit with a speech to Congress and a tour of decaying bridges.

No consensus of Congress, no law. That’s how the American system works; no one can make it work against its will. If marijuana policy voters put Ron Paul in the Oval Office, he still wouldn’t be able to legalize it with this Congress. In fact, the great failure of progressive movement politics is that issue hawks invested far too much expectation in a president. The laws are written by Congress and legislatures. That isn’t apologetics, it’s basic civics.

Progressives must avoid fixating on any one office or branch of government; they are all integral to problems and solutions. The government is larger than one man, and so a progressive agenda must always seek a broader base of progress than one man. My objection to firebagging is not about defending the administration, then, but defending the cause.

“We” are the change we have waited for. “He” isn’t — and can’t be. That’s not how things work, and I don’t say so because I like him or want someone’s approval. Moreover, I have no problem recognizing his imperfections. Many of them are common to Democrats and the progressive movement. As I keep saying, look where he comes from.

King is remembered for nonviolence, but his primary focus wasn’t even on Vietnam. His war was at home, where millions of American citizens with black skin lived in constant fear of violence as second-class citizens. Listen to the horrifying sadness of an old field holler, or the paranoia of an old blues song, and you will hear the cry that moved him. Listen to him autotuned, and you’ll hear a better use of his legacy than the president’s critics are making.

Any President, Willard?

Please forgive the first 20 seconds of static; I didn’t do the upload. Enjoy!

This is for the Progressive Left. Sit back, pour yourself some Chardonnay and listen, listen to the words of the divine George Benson:-

Now, think about those words and what the singer is singing about. While you’re thinking about that, there’s an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times by Andrew Rosenthal entitled “Nobody Likes to Talk About It, But It’s There.”

In case you haven’t surmised, the op-ed is all about the racial overtones that have enveloped political discourse since we elected the first African American President. It’s a good article, and one that you really ought to read.

It’s kind of ironic that, on the eve of the next national election, we’re finally admitting that we really should talk about race and race relations a bit more in America, which is a roundabout way of saying that, even though we elected a black man to be our country’s leader, we really aren’t past racism in any sense of the word. If anything, the election of Barack Obama heightened racism in America, and that’s our fault. For that, we should be deeply ashamed.

I totally agree with everything Rosenthal says in this piece, but he speaks only about the Republican party, the so-called Loyal Opposition. It would have been more courageous and a tad more honest if Rosenthal had had the cojones to admit that racism does exist on the Left – and especially on the Progressive Left – as well as on the Right.

Rosenthal writes:-

There has been a racist undertone to many of the Republican attacks leveled against President Obama for the last three years, and in this dawning presidential campaign.

You can detect this undertone in the level of disrespect for this president that would be unthinkable were he not an African-American. Some earlier examples include: Rep. Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at one of Mr. Obama’s first appearances before Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner rejecting Mr. Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress—the first such denial in the history of our republic.

First of all, it isn’t just the Republicans who display open disrespect for this President. Just watch any Press Conference – Jake Tapper, upChuck Todd are prime examples of almost open disrespect and condescension. People like Maureen Dowd call the President inept and refer to him regularly as “Barry,” much the same way Tea Party activists do. To Arianna Huffington, the President is a Nowhere Man. Chris Matthews accuses him of being arrogant and ungrateful for being allowed to live in the White House. Bill Maher veers from gangsta to wimpy and wussy in describing the President. Michael Moore voted for the black man but is disappointed that Obama acts like a white man; Jane Hamsher advocates “African-American” Re-Education Programs in order to wise the poor Negroes up about the sly, sneaking and snide President Obama.

And poor Joan Walsh … well, we know about her problem.

Rosenthal also says:-

Sometimes the racism is more oblique. Newt Gingrich was prattling on the other day about giving “poor children” in “housing projects” jobs cleaning toilets in public schools to teach them there is an alternative to becoming a pimp or a drug dealer. These children, he said, have no work ethic. If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t get that poor kids in housing projects is code for minorities, he or she hasn’t been paying attention to American politics for the last 50 years. Mr. Gingrich is also fond of calling Mr. Obama “the greatest food stamp President in American history.”

Is Mr. Romney playing the same chords when he talks about how Mr. Obama wants to create an “entitlement society”? The president has said nothing of the sort, and the accusation seems of a piece with the old Republican saw that blacks collect the greatest share of welfare dollars.

All of the above are strident dog whistles straight from the Lee Atwater school, but on his December 19th telecast, Chris Hayes raised the spectre of Gene Marks’s controversial Forbes article. entitled “If I Were a Poor Black Kid,” and got handed his ass by Karen Hunter, who wanted to know why we always spoke about the poor black inner city kid. Why not talk about the poor white kid in Appalachia or the poor white kid in a trailer park?

She had a point, and Hayes ended up looking like a little prick.

The loaded language coming from the Left today isn’t just about “weakness” and “caving,” and “dithering” (all, unconsciously – or maybe not – tying into the Antebellum myths propagated about the moral terpitude and debility of black people in general, and the black male, in particular). Cenk Uygur’s assertion that the President is stupid is an extension of the old myth that blacks weren’t as smart as whites and, therefore, had to be guided. (I know Cenk asserts on Twitter, that he’s not “white,” but I have news for Cenk: Turkey is a European country and Cenk is white.) If Cenk has any doubts about Turkish whiteness, he should have a look at the London mayor, Boris Johnson who is of Turkish descent:-

Where the Tea Partying Right spoke of “Socialist” and “Communist” and “Nazi” as euphemisms for the n-word, the language of the Left is “Obummer” and “drones” and the latest analogy of the President raping a nun on television.

Today on his Facebook page, the author Ishmael Reed made two prescient remarks:-

If anybody doubted the growing alliance between progressives and the far right ,amy goodman’s show this a.m. should erase these doubts. she let a tea party co-founder rant against the president without challenging his lies.this must be what a salon.com obama hater meant when he said that occupy w.street, should join the tea party on basis of “shared premises.”later in the show a progressive said nice things about ron paul. seems that the progressives would have learned after The Molotov–Ribbentrop pact of 1939.you don’t do business with Nazis!

And:-

greenwald is the guy who is calling for an alliance between the tea party and occupy. even though the tea party has given holocaust deniers a prominent role.if obama loses, the dem.coalition should rid itself of progressives. let them go join nader,the loser ,who called the president an uncle tom.

All this is true. If racism is the core basis for the opposition on the part of the Republican party, then racism as insipid cognitive dissonance and patronising condescension on the part of the Left. They refuse to believe this. After all, who wants to admit to racism? They voted for the black man, didn’t they? But then, many of these people are now flocking to Ron Paul.

They need to realise something: You can’t hide your racism behind a veil of pot smoke and a peace symbol.

This last song’s for you:-

Cross-posted from Emilia Wahoo ]]> http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/two-songs-and-a-few-home-truths-for-the-professional-left-and-their-followers.html/feed 0 http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/both-sides-do-it.html http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/both-sides-do-it.html#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:00:22 +0000 Matt Osborne http://www.osborneink.com/?p=17899 Continue reading →]]> The Republican Party always has a new plan for taking down Clinton Obama, and that plan always makes room for liberal discontent. Here’s Greg Sargent yesterday:

While it’s true that disapproval of Obama on the economy is running high over government’s failure to fix the economy, the independents and moderates who will decide the presidential election agree with Obama’s overall fiscal vision — his jobs creation proposals and insistence on taxing the wealthy to pay for them. They also recognize that Republicans are more to blame than Dems for government’s failure to implement those proposals. But as Steve Kornacki recently noted, blaming Obama for failing to transcend politics as usual despite determined GOP opposition may be the best way to give indys and moderates a reason to vote against Obama even though they generally agree and sympathize with him. And so, after doing everything in their power to prevent Obama from successfully transcending partisanship and achieving transformative change — even if it meant repeatedly opposing solutions to profound national problems they once embraced — Republicans will now attack him for failing to transcend partisanship and achieve transformative change.

And who will help them achieve this? Why, none other than the professional poutragers of the left, for whom the president has indeed failed “to transcend partisanship and achieve transformative change.” That line is their battle-standard, and under its flapping tassels everything is terrible and it is the president’s fault. They would be this way for any Democratic president, not just Obama, but their rhetoric has reached fever-pitch in a disturbingly-familiar harmony.

Consider the recent nontroversy over the National Defense Authorization Act, or as I call it, ”death panels for freedom.” Calls to veto the NDAA are exactly like teapublicans playing chicken with national debt default. The dialectic of poutrage also demeans progressive language; for example, Greenwald narrows the very definition of “civil liberties” to position Ron Paul, who objects to the Civil Rights Act, on the president’s “left.”

As I keep saying, the Greenwaldians and Hamsherites are being ratfucked, but neither understand nor care. They are as sure of their opposition to the Obama presidency as any teabagging wingnut with an ugly sign. Like the folks at Mo Brooks’ town hall, they only know that the president must go; the details — who, what, how, and what comes after — are unimportant. They are fixated.

When they denounce “blind worship” of the president, they actually describe their own blindness to any explanation of events that does not center on the president as the sole bad actor. Some of this, especially among the younger netroots-set, can be ascribed to poor civics education in America. If you neither understand or care how government works, you will tend to identify the most prominent face in politics as “the government.”

Readers may also recall Jonathan Chait’s recent essay on the problem of liberal discontent with presidents who inevitably fall short of unrealistic expectations. Republicans are also quite aware of progressives’ reactive and fissiparous nature; in fact, they plan for it. Let’s flash back to the midterm elections with Booman:

(The GOP) knew the left would get dispirited and frustrated and start fighting amongst themselves. They knew their own base would love it and reward them for it. They knew the media wouldn’t be an honest referee. They knew that in a bad economy, white majority America would respond to their ACORN/Henry Louis Gates Jr./New Black Panther Party/Shirley Sherrod/Health-Care-is-for-minorities/Sharia Law/Ground Zero mosque/illegal immigration themes. And they knew that if they only stuck to the plan, there wouldn’t be a damn thing the Democrats could do about it. And there wasn’t. They went scorched Earth, and if you’re honest, we didn’t have the tools to combat them.

We still don’t, and the Earth is now being scorched by fire-breathers leveraging that progressive discontent. To what end — for what motive — is not at all important. In America’s winner-take-all political system, they might as well be Republicans because the effect is the same. There is no room for compromise in poutrage politics: anyone who dares to stand against their absolutism is a “cultist” because they are a cult. Obama-hate is their magical fetish. If that sounds like the heyday of Sarah Palin-worship, you are getting the picture.

If nothing else, let it be said that the Presidency of Barack Obama proved one precise thing: That the United States is not a post-racial country. More importantly – as 2011 revealed – racism is as rampant on the Left side of the political spectrum as on the Right. More subtle, perhaps, and with a decidedly different flavour, but it’s there all the same.

Add to racism, misogyny, as well. We’re all familiar with the Religious Right’s war on women – the efforts to curtail and then to make illegal abortion, efforts in some states to make all sorts of contraception illegal, personhood initiatives. It seems, in some instances, people who identify with the Left can live with those things, if it means getting rid of Barack Obama. A small price to pay, surely.

No one likes being labelled a racist. Not even known or exposed racists like being fingered as one. But for the longest time, the Progressive Left have seen themselves above that sort of thing, to the extent that many confidently asserted that racism simply does not exist on the Left.

And the Barack Obama was elected.

In the United States, we are ill-served by our political media. They are populated by known hacks (Halperin, Fineman), trust fund babies whose careers were bought for them (Katrina vanden Heuvel), soccer moms with furrowed brows (Joan Walsh), social climbers (Arianna Huffington), failed lawyers with an axe to grind (CenkyStank and Gigi Greenwald), ex-sportscasters with an ego the size of Brooklyn Bridge and a maturity level the size of an amoeba (Keith Olbermann) and assorted comics with a bathroom desire to be taken seriously as political pundits (Bill Maher). Not to mention the Boys’ Brigade and their Troop Leader (Adam Green, Chris Hayes and Scout Leader Michael Moore). And let’s not forget the hootin’n hollerin’ version of Southern Rush, Ed Schultz.

If you’ve ever lived in a place infested by cockroaches, you know how quickly they can appear. The Professional Left, who serve as “interpreters” or spokesmen for the liberal political media have proven themselves to be veritable cockroaches infesting the Democratic electorate ever since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Almost immediately, Arianna Huffington led the fray, complaining about every undertaking the Administration proposed from January 2009. The Cabinet wasn’t up to Her Majesty’s liking, especially the appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Almost immediately, The Huffington Post built a narrative of Geithner as the traitor who would ill-serve not only the President but also the public in general. From there, her complaints continued. Her reporters – wet-nosed puppies who’d be pounding the beat on bake sales in parochial papers, learning their trade – were encouraged to quote shady “anonymous sources” who “knew the minds” of various Cabinet members/advisors etc who were being targeted as inadequate to Progressives’ demands.

Then the ubiquitous name-calling of the President began. To Huffington, the President became “Nowhere Man.” But the real damage started in the run up to the Midterms, when Huffington trolled the country, passing the meme that Obama was just not into the Middle Class. She was still preaching this mantra even at the beginning of 2011.

Huffington was a powerful voice for Progressives. I say “was,” because she never really was one, only except to the extent where she could make a swift buck. I always questioned why the media and the liberal political commentary media took for granted her Damascene conversion, literally overnight, from virulent neocon to ueber Progressive. “Shallow” is not descriptive enough of their mental facilities in questioning such a volte-face.

But since Huffington sold her rag to AOL and assumed the mantra of a media moghul, herself, becoming a veritable corporate whore in addition to the media whoredom she dominated so well, her rag has become legion with nothing but anti-Obama rhetoric; and her lily-white staff resemble the privileged end of the Young Republicans.

Ask yourself if anyone presenting themselves as a spokesman for the 99 percent, would be seen, promoting herself and her editor, pallin’ around the society end of Los Angeles in the toyboy’s latest boy toy:-

The 2010 Midterms were the start of the great cockroach invasion. We all know what happened when the foghorn tones of Ed Schultz commanded the Progressive sheeple not to vote.

But the two most revealing pejoratives to come out of the past year, concerning the Professional Left, were the open misogyny and racism.

2010 ended with Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann descending into fits of shits and giggles over the claims of the women allegedly raped by Julian Assange. Basically, both men – who both appear to have severe issues regarding women anyway – dismissed the womean as irrelevant and their claims as “hooey.” You can read a brilliant account of their on-air exchange, complete with transcript on Melissa McEwan’s Shakesville site here.

If that’s not enough, 2011 ended and 2012 began with Glenn Greenwald’s cheap shot joke about the President raping a nun. This came about as a result of Greenwald being questioned by another lawyer on Twitter regarding inaccurate and deliberately misleading remarks he made regarding the NDAA bill. Instead of answering the questions posed, Greenwald did his usual party piece of slinging ad hominem and punching down, offended that a mere member of the public should question his opinion. This then descended to the point where he made a frightfully disgusting joke, for which neither he nor any of his associated minions at Salon deigned to apologise.

That’s another thing about the Professional Left. They have each others’ backs to a point where it’s practically incestuous. When various tweeters on that social networking site then alerted Greenwald’s editor at Salon, Joan Walsh, to what was said and demanded that she or Salon respond in kind to what was an insidious remark, Walsh, instead whined about all the hate trolling coming her way about “someone she was asked to denouce” and then announce she was blocking those people.

Another trick of the Professional Left, all those who deal in the social networking sites. They pretend they want to interact with their readers or followers, but once a person with no claim to fame of influence disagrees with their opinion, they first resort to ad hominem (Walsh always implies that anyone who doesn’t see her point of view is mentally deficient – “get help” – whilst people like Olbermann or Greenwald insult people’s intelligence with words like “moron”) and then they block. Hey, if we don’t see you, you’re not there. (Hold that thought).

Walsh has run into problems, herself, this year, when she got into a tussle with African American bloggers on Twitter, for having deliberately misinterpreting Ismael Reed’s remarks about the Democratic base. to the extent that Walsh actually blurted out the infamous remark about resenting black people who say they are the President’s base. You can read all about that encounter here, here and here.

Walsh was like a stereotypical harridan from that point. A low point in discourse (but not as low as admitting her resentment of black people) was Walsh tweeting that all people who were vociferous supporters of the President were nothing more than GOP trolls paid by Andrew Breitbart. She even referred to the President’s supporters as “Obamalovers” (a favourite term used by resident Salon bully and race-baiter Glenn Greenwald and a euphemism for another word).

The irony of the Breitbart reference came during Weinergate, when Joan’s polemic, accusing Breitbart of doctoring “evidence” in order to smear Anthony Weiner, actually in the end validated Andrew Breitbart as a journalist. Go figure.

But Walsh’s racism was really brought to the fore in the latter part of this year – hers and that of two other Salon scions, David Sirota and Gene Lyons. It all started with Melissa Harris Perry’s seminal opinion piece entitled “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama.”

In the article, Harris-Perry compared the President’s performance with what Bill Clinton, the last Democratic President and the one currently being revised in history by various Progressives as a great white hope, achieved, and concluded:-

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

More than any other place in the blogosphere, Salon erupted with a flurry of blogposts, decrying Harris-Perry’s conclusion. Salon, let it be said, has been the favoured rabbit hutch of disaffected PUMAdom for the past three years. No less than wannabe Ninja fighter David Sirota weighed in with an invective, likening Harris Perry and the President’s supporters to the Ku Klux Klan (I’d provide a link, but the article has since been taken down by Salon). Then veteran Clintonista, Gene Lyons, a product of the University of Virginia when UVa was all male, all white and all rich, produced the most racist, sexist piece of tripe ever to be published by a so-called Progressive publication, wherein he implied that Harris-Perry attained her academic position by racial intimidation and her position as political analyst on MSNBC via her good looks. You can read this piece of garbage here.

But the piece which sparked a subsequent response by Harris Perry was an overly-long and rambling article in response to Harris Perry’s original work, by none other than Joan Walsh, wherein she dismissed Harris Perry’s arguments as divisive and insignificant and smugly and patronisingly referred to Harris Perry as her “professional friend.” You can read Walsh’s special bit of dog-whistling here.

Walsh’s article, wherein she basically challenged her “professional friend” to prove that racism on the Left exists, elicited an almost immediate response from Harris Perry. Please. When a person of colour identifies racism, listen. When a woman cries sexism, respond. To ignore either thing, is to cease immediately identifying yourself as either liberal or Progressive. Harris Perry’s response was measured, but sharp:-

Progressives and liberals should be particularly careful when they demand proof of intentionality rather than evidence of disparate impact in conversations about racism. Recall that initially the 1964 Civil Rights Act made “disparate impact” a sufficient evidentiary claim for racial bias. In other words, a plaintiff did not need to prove that anyone was harboring racial animus in their hearts, they just needed to show that the effects of a supposedly race neutral policy actually had a discernible, disparate impact on people of color. The doctrine of disparate impact helped to clear many discriminatory housing and employment policies off the books.

(snip)

I believe we must be careful and judicious in our conversations about racism. But I also believe that those who demand proof of interpersonal intention to create a racist outcome are missing the point about how racism works. Racism is not exclusively about hooded Klansmen; it is also about the structures of bias and culture of privilege that infect the left as well.

And, ultimately, the absolute kickdown to Walsh’s assertion of friendship with Harris Perry:-

Which brings us to a second common strategy of argument about one’s racial innocence: the “I have black friends” claim. I was shocked and angered when Salon’s Joan Walsh used this strategy in her criticism of my piece. Although I disagree with her, I have no problem with Walsh’s decision to take on the claims in my piece. I consider it a sign of respect to publicly engage those with whom you disagree. I was taken aback that Walsh emphasized the extent of our friendship. Walsh and I have been professionally friendly. We’ve eaten a few meals. I invited her to speak at Princeton and I introduced her to my literary agent. We are not friends. Friendship is a deep and lasting relationship based on shared sacrifice and joys. We are not intimates in that way. Watching Walsh deploy our professional familiarity as a shield against claims of her own bias is very troubling. In fact, it is one of the very real barriers to true interracial friendship and intimacy.

Racism showed itself, again when Michael Moore brought Bill Maher into the argument by quoting him, saying that when he voted for the President, he voted for the black man, but the white man showed up. Needless to say, there was no apology forthcoming from either Moore or Maher. They chose to ignore the fact that such a disgusting thing had been said at all, although it’s not the first time Maher has indulged in racial stereotyping and race-baiting and disguised it as comedy.

It was left to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adam Serwer to respond to Moore’s and Maher’s assumptions.

Coates called out their ignorance:-

If you paid more attention to Obama’s skin color, than to his speeches, the voluminous amounts of journalism noting his moderation, his two books which are, themselves, exercises in moderation, then you have chosen to be ignorant.

You are now being punished for that ignorance. No one should feel sorry for you. Try not being racist.

Serwer actually made a direct comparison in the racism of Maher and Moore to that of Rush Limbaugh and concluded:-

What Limbaugh, Moore and Maher all have in common is a common, reductive expectation of what a “black man” is supposed to be—aggressive, belligerent, intimidating—and Obama doesn’t fit the bill. All three are embracing a paternalistic social tyranny of trying to define the acceptable limits of people’s behavior based on their racial background, something that still happens even in America even if you end up being president of the United States. If you’re president, though, it’s much easier to just brush your shoulders off—dealing with those kind of expectations when you’re an average person is considerably more difficult. Especially when the “liberals” are the ones saying stuff like this.

Moore and Maher have graduated from race-baiting, which was largely ignored or excused as “comedy” by the Professional Left; now they’ve moved onto a more perfidious meme – exhorting peole not to vote. They’ve effectively given up on the President. Maher repeatedly whines about President Obama not exhibiting any real Democratic policies, which is, of course, a blatant lie. But people such as he depend on low-information voters on the Left to hang on his every word. What he’s actually doing is something of which the late Lee Atwater would be proud. It’s the evolution of dog whistling language. “Community schools” and “enforced busing” have now become “no Democratic principles” and “no backbone.”

In 2011, for the Professional Left, racism became the new black.

And in addition to advising people not to vote, we’ve got the Cenks and the Greenwalds, encouraging people actually to abandon the President and throw in their lot with Ron Paul. For the low-info voters on the Left, Paul’s the one who’ll legalise pot (so they can smoke enough to become really low-info voters) and bring all the troops home (and discharge them to mass unemployment); for the better-off of the Professional Left, sure they know a Paul presidency would mean the end of Social Security and other welfare net programs, as well as public education and a woman’s right to choose. But as Greenwald put it, sacrificing Social Security was enough so that no more Muslim babies be killed by an evil Obama drone. And, really, racism engendered by the Drug Wars is far more pernicious than anything Ron Paul said in any of his newsletters.

The answer as well to an uncomforably close association with assorted Klan members, Stormfront troopers, survivalists, Truthers and general misogynists is simply to look the other way. If you refuse to see it, it’s just not there.

I dread 2012. I dread the election. I am, by nature, a pessimist, and I dread what fighting a two-front war as a Democrat will mean. I want something done, though, with the Professional Left. I want someone of caliber -and the PragProgs are firing the salvoes of a small band of resistance fighters – to call out these clowns for the underminers they are. Their racism and their misogyny have been exposed. Fight them with it.

Time for the Professional Left to be confined to the woodwork … with their friends.

Cross-posted from Emilia Wahoo ]]> http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/the-year-of-the-cockroach.html/feed 7 http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/the-obama-fixation.html http://www.osborneink.com/2012/01/the-obama-fixation.html#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:00:16 +0000 Matt Osborne http://www.osborneink.com/?p=17855 Continue reading →]]>

I would desperately like to stop writing about Glenn Greenwald. Like Glenn Beck, he’s someone I understood a long time ago and mostly wish to ignore. Thus I make seldom mention of Beck since his dismissal, and hope to do the same when Greenwald burns his last bridge. And he might be doing just that, having made a rape joke on Twitter.

He’s getting disapproval by mainstream voices now. Some of them already know about Greenwald, but do not speak of him. They are journalists and activists who used to subscribe to any the email lists he has destroyed with his divisive tantrums over the years. As I say, I have understood Greenwald for a long, long time.

Greenwald is fond of saying that his critics “blindly worship” the president; he calls us “cultists.” In fact, Greenwald behaves like a cult leader, and his sycophants (see the link above) immediately rationalize his rape jokes. The fixation on President Obama is theirs, not mine or anyone else’s. The NDAA fallout that started this episode is a perfect illustration of that.

Remember, the legislative sections at issue are the will of Congress, not the president. If there is a civil liberties issue, it is with the eighty seven Senators who voted for NDAA. In my world, the Constitution provides for three branches of government, and one of those branches (Congress) is putting language about indefinite detention into a routine defense spending bill that has been passed forty-eight years in a row. In Greenwald’s world, the President hates freedom and Congress doesn’t write law.

Like Glenn Beck, Glenn Greenwald (Greenbeck?) fails on basic civics. His polemics are performance art. His facts are out of context and his narrative arc never changes. It is little wonder he keeps doubling-down on the Ron Paul love: the most conservative congressman since 1937 is also the highest-profile figure in paranoid politics. Like talk radio cretin Alex Jones, who co-sponsors the Paul candidacy with him, Greenwald could title his fictions The Obama Deception.